User blog:LexsJB/Thoughts on other Orchard series
Hi I hope you've had a good summer. About one third of mine I spent editing and adding to this wiki, and one of the new pages I added was about Orchard Books, the publishers of Rainbow Magic. I just added it to give context on the series as one of my main goals on any wiki I edit is to give information and detail you couldn't find on Wikipedia. Whilst researching the different series of Orchard Books, I realised that I've actually bought books of half of them. I know some users of this wiki like to look up the similar series of Rainbow Magic, like the Magic Animal Friends. I might give a small review of how I feel about them, so if people are interested, they can use this blog to see which series sound quite interesting. Rainbow Magic Obviously, this series is about Rachel and Kirsty who need to get magic items back from Jack Frost and his goblins. It's hard to summarise my whole feelings about Rainbow Magic because they've varied over years as I've got older. They truly felt magical when I was younger and you didn't really notice the generic formula of each story. But now, RM's been going on for 15 years and you can tell they're kind of out of ideas (the discovery fairies are quite a different concept though) and the organisation is a mess. If you're actually more interested in my RM opinions, just look on literally any one of my blogs. Beast Quest I've never touched this series but I've come across it when I was younger and the boys in my class were just obsessed with it as the girls had been with Rainbow Magic. I only just discovered it managed to spawn a whole PS4 game, quite recently even (2018) so it's managed to stay relevant. It also has a spin off series, which Rainbow Magic doesn't have. Maybe Beast Quest is actually more popular than Rainbow Magic and I don't know because I don't keep up with that series. Secret Kingdom This series is about three friends Ellie Summer and Jasmine (who have great chemistry btw) and they have to stop Queen Malice's plans. The plans differ in each series, for example the girls need to find ingredients for a medicine that will stop the king from turning into a frog, or each of the girls' talents are gone if they can't get the item back, or that Malice has put thunderbolts around the Kingdom and the girls need to reverse the problems it causes to destroy them. It's really creative. I think it was from a blog Lalalei2001 wrote about Secret Kingdom. I was quite interested and decided to check it out, and only by reading the samples I fell in love with the series. I have to say they were so much better than Rainbow Magic as they fixed all the problems RM had: the main characters had personalities, all the stories connected to each other so that means the characters referenced previous places or even visited them again, and also more reoccurring characters. Also, the plot lines were much more complex, as more problems arose after the characters solved them, rather than having just one problem to solve. In RM you feel that once a fairy story's finished, that's them done forever apart from the small cameo in another story. But you get a sense of an actual small community in Secret Kingdom. It's a pity it ended but I wouldn't want it to become boring and repetitive. Magic Animal Friends I'm not into animal series, not even RM animal series. But I have read most samples of the series and I think they've got a stronger sense of traditional fairytale magic in it as you've got talking animals and witches and stuff. I'm not one to comment on this series as I've never read a full book but I have to say I'd recommend this to girls who really really really really really love animals, as every story opens with the main characters looking after animals at a farm or something. Secret Princesses This series is about two friends, Mia and Charlotte. Charlotte moves away to America and the girls can't see each other anymore but they get these necklaces from their pop star friend who is a Wish Princess. The girls aim to become Wish Princesses by granting people's wishes. I had to check out this series as it replaced Secret Kingdom. I bought only two books. I think they're new, definitely different. But they really hammer in the fact that Charlotte lives in America. They describe the fact they have thick pancakes (in comparison to thin crepes we get in UK) in unnecessary detail, the fact she's picked up on saying 'recess' instead of break time, making orange juice from oranges in their back garden, even the rules of baseball at one point if I can remember. It just gets too tiring and if I had read all the Secret Princess books, I would've gone mad due to the constant references to American culture. I don't know what their aim here is, and I don't think these books are out in America but that's good because I bet Americans would get sick to death of this. As for the stories, they're alright. I wouldn't reread them tons of times but like Secret Kingdom there are multiple problems to overcome. Although the last book hasn't come out yet, I think it's good that the series is getting a conclusion, as it's been building towards the two main characters becoming a princess. I didn't really expect it to end so soon. Unicorn Magic Sounds like another Magic Animal Friends series, I don't think I'll check it out. Final words I'm done with all these series, apart from Rainbow Magic. Even though they've all finished, I don't usually reread their books unless I'm really in the mood. Since I've read 3 of these Orchard series, I can easily see that there's a formula to stories that Orchard likes to publish. However they've changed from a male antagonist (RM) to female antagonists (Secret Kingdom, Magic Animal Friends and Secret Princesses) and they give the main characters more variety compared to RM (as in Secret Kingdom, two of the girls live different family members, like a step parent or their grandma, compared to Rainbow Magic where Rachel and Kirsty just have their parents. It's quite refreshing) But then again that's just my opinion. I hope this blog was bearable to read as it's just all my thoughts again. I felt like writing a blog and I was planning to find out the size of a fairy using trigonometry on an illustration I found but that's too much hard work. Maybe next time. have fun LexsJBTalk 09:54, August 31, 2018 (UTC) Category:Blog posts